The Decree of the End of Time

Coughs and slow steps,

Dark passage, long whispers

Desperate circles:

Step by step; frayed, threadbare sapphires are exhausted of purpose

A snake inside this page reads itself from beginning to end,
Tail in mouth, it swallows its meaning

Step by step, moment by moment

A staircase that leads to the bottom of nothing,

Always rising into dust of thoughts above you

Glimmers into a spontaneous mirror

Filled with people you’ve never seen-

You don’t recognize yourself among them.

Transfixed mirror, bleeding copiously, dies without seeing

Roomful of minds,

Scatter of bodies

Roomful of names and voices

Apparitions of mirrors staring lasciviously at each other,

In a decaying room that you never enter,

And one more room broad as a scream,

Like the present moment you can’t find

You hear the revocation of time by ancient children

And the staircase into the wilderness of suffering,

It leads only to the bottom of nothing, eternally leading on:

You avoid this thunder and chasm in the mountains of bewilderment
Inside your house

Your mind of chaff, your mind winnowed clean, 
But no kernel of meaning

Disheveled chamber of night and broken throne of day, 
You sit like overthrown royalty in dishabille

With the excruciating desire to feed a single mouth with a dozen hands,

That scream that falls from the staircase, the broken neck of time.

Eagle and tempest that never cease circling the tower of madness

Undressed face, overused face

That stares into a demolished mirror

For a timeless moment, an hour wasted of precious madness

And the coughs and slow steps, they await

Among a vipers den of names and places 
That you forget the names of,
Where the snake uncoils from the pages that you read.

You search the mirror again; more faces you don’t recognize.

So many people looking for you now that you are lost.

You should be glad to be of concern to the multitudes who stare at you

They stare at you, another one of you whom you haven’t met yet

In the perpetual motion of a mirror, the circle squared

In that lifetime of embarrassment in which you avoid your reflection

That searches for you to feed you ignorance and despair.

Step by step, the staircase into the bottom of nothing

Passes all the mirrors that have been cancelled 
By the decree of the end of time by ancient children.